Italian pharmaceuticals Rottapharm Madaus this week sold itself in a $3.1 billion deal without appointing an investment bank to the mandate, a move one City of London healthcare banker described as "scary".

Rothschild's London office

Swedish pharma company Meda yesterday agreed the deal to acquire Rottapharm, which is owned by the Rovati family.

Advising the acquirer on this lucrative transaction was Rothschild, the UK independent investment bank. Working on Rottapharm's side of the deal table was the group's 44-year-old chief financial officer Sigieri Diaz and his legal and tax advisers. But no investment bank.

While it's not unheard of for a corporate to eschew large investment banks on a big deal – relying instead, say, on an in-house team of advisory bankers – Rottapharm’s decision is rare. One head of healthcare investment banking at a bulge-bracket adviser in London described the move as “scary”.

There are a number of reasons why Rottapharm chose to go it alone in this transaction, according to people familiar with the company.

Second, and possibly more importantly, the company only last month pulled the plug on an initial public offering, citing “unfavorable Italian and international market conditions”. A host of investment banks had been lined up as global coordinators and bookrunners. All the work that would have gone into preparing the books for an IPO would have given Diaz and his legal team at Pavesi Gitti Verzoni a good idea of Rottapharm's value, the people said.

A senior healthcare banker working in the City added: “They have not declared financial advisers but they would have received formal and informal financial advice. That is something that you can assume. In Rottapharm’s case even more so because they were heading for an IPO.”

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Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan were hired by the company as global coordinators for its initial public offering and, together with Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and Banca IMI, were also joint-bookrunners. That's a long list of investment banks that could potentially have been called in to advise on the eventual sale but were not.

This is not the first time Rottapharm has considered a sale. Little more than two years ago the company hired Credit Suisse to explore a sale, but this ultimately came to nothing.

Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. JP Morgan, Jefferies and Banca IMI did not return calls for comment in time for publication.

Rothschild, at least, will take some credit home for the league tables. Its bankers on the deal were managing directors Julian Hudson, Dominic Hollamby and Stefano Beschi, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bank has now been on 137 European deals worth $141.9 billion this year.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to clarify that Rothschild has worked on 137 deals in Europe so far this year.